


Sleep It Off

by Nearly



Category: The Umbrella Academy (TV)
Genre: Gen, Headaches & Migraines, Hurt Klaus Hargreeves, Hurt/Comfort, Light Angst, Sick Character, Sick Klaus Hargreeves, Sickfic, honestly I don't know what else to tag
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-10
Updated: 2019-05-10
Packaged: 2020-02-29 17:20:03
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,870
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18782704
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nearly/pseuds/Nearly
Summary: Klaus has a migraine, his siblings think he's high, and Five likes to pretend he doesn't care about his brother.





	Sleep It Off

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this for a prompt from @taylortut on tumblr. It ended up longer than I meant it to be, but that just means more for you to read ;) 
> 
> If you like it, drop a comment to tell me what you think!

Klaus felt like shit, plain and simple. He’d had a migraine building all morning, and it seemed to have reached its peak. His head was pounding, and his body couldn’t seem to decide if it was hot or cold; he alternated between shivering under as many blankets as possible, or throwing them all off trying to get away from the heat. It felt like he was sweating and freezing all at once, and every movement made his head ache more than before. The ghosts were louder too, now that he was sober, which didn’t help matters much. 

“Just tell someone you’re sick, Klaus,” Ben said from where he’d been sitting cross-legged on the floor. Klaus groaned and shuffled deeper into the covers he had piled around him.

“...Jus’ need to sleep,” He muttered, but he flinched as a ghost let out a shriek next to the bed, and Ben sighed. 

“I don’t think that’s going to--” Ben jumped and cut himself off at the sound of Luther calling from downstairs. Klaus winced. 

“Family meeting, five minutes!” Luther bellowed again. Klaus shifted slowly, maneuvering himself out from under his nest of blankets. Ben tried to protest, but it’s not like he could physically push Klaus back into bed, so his brother waved him off and kept going. He pressed his palm to his forehead as he sat up, letting his naturally-cold fingers give him a brief release from the pain. 

“Klaus, come on,” Ben protested again as Klaus made to stand up. “Luther would let you sit this one out if you just tell him what’s wrong.” Klaus hummed, not wanting to shake his head and make it all worse. 

“No, he’d just think ’m high. Alison too.” Diego might have believed him, and Ben knew it too, but Klaus didn’t give him enough time to voice that before pushing himself up and making his way out into the hallway. Besides, Diego didn’t have the time to bother with him when he was busy saving the world, and Klaus could take care of himself anyway. He was feeling all kinds of terrible--weak and shaky, dry mouth, nausea threatening to crawl up his throat--but it was fine. He’d felt worse. He could handle it.

That is, he  _ could _ , until he shuffled by the bathroom doorway a little too fast, tripped over the carpet, and stumbled enough to bash his shoulder into the doorframe. He caught himself before he could fall completely, but the movement sent shooting pain through his head and he was suddenly glad that he’d managed to bump into the bathroom door rather than a bedroom, because he was about to lose the loose hold he’d had on his queasy stomach. 

Klaus had barely a second to get to his knees in front of the toilet before he was retching up the meager breakfast he’d had that morning, and  _ god,  _ he took back what he’d said before, this was the  _ worst.  _ He didn’t want to handle it. He wanted someone else to handle it, preferably someone other than Ben who could actually touch things. Between heaves, he contemplated taking Ben’s advice for once, and actually telling Luther he wasn’t feeling too hot, but the large man in question was at the door before he could finish the thought. 

“Klaus! I called a family meeting, get your ass out of bed before I-- oh,” Luther passed the doorway and then backtracked, trailing off in his rant when he spotted Klaus dry heaving into the toilet bowl. Klaus caught Ben glaring at him out of the corner of his eye, silently urging him to say something. He didn’t.

“Um,” Luther looked a little put out, like he wasn’t sure what to say in this situation. Klaus retched again, and Luther’s mouth curled in disgust. “Is this withdrawal again?” 

“Didn’t take anything,” Klaus groaned, looking uncharacteristically miserable. He wished he could turn the lights off. 

“Right,” Luther said, “Just… come downstairs as soon as you’re done, I guess.” He left more quickly than he’d come, leaving Klaus alone to listen to Ben’s angry rambling.

“You’ve been sober for ten months!” Ben was saying, rather loudly, but lowered his voice as soon as he caught Klaus grimacing. 

“Not to them,” Klaus sighed, resting his aching forehead against the cool porcelain of the toilet bowl. It seemed like he was in the clear, for now, as long as he avoided any sudden movements. “Only been sober for two days, technically. Time travel’s a bitch.”

“He didn’t even ask if you were okay,” Ben said, more softly this time. Klaus waved him off with one manicured hand. 

“I’m fine, Benny boy.” He stood on shaky legs and steadied himself against the wall, waiting for the pounding of his head to calm before he started his walk to the living room. He flushed the toilet twice. “Let’s head down, shall we? Can’t start a party without me, of course.”

* * *

 

He managed to make it to the living room in one piece--even if he’d love to have his head knocked off, because he was sure that would hurt less than it did now--and lowered himself gracelessly onto the couch. Everyone else was already there. 

“Great, now that you’re done getting high, we can finally get started,” Luther said. 

“You’re high?” Diego exclaimed, turning to stare at him.  “You said you were done with that shit, man.”

“Didn’t take anything,” Klaus repeated, draping himself over the cushions and closing his eyes. He didn’t have to look to know his siblings were all glaring at him with varying degrees of disappointment. He shook off his own disappointment at their disbelief with a fairly accurate impersonation of dear-old-daddy, if he did say so himself; “You may begin, Number One!”

Alison groaned, Luther sighed, and Klaus was pretty sure Diego rolled his eyes. That seemed likely. He didn’t hear anything from Five. 

He tuned out the rest of the conversation, for the most part, throwing an arm over his eyes to block out the living room lights. The migraine had admittedly been getting better, after the bathroom incident, but it was back to pounding now. His head felt like it would split open and the lights were too bright and Luther was yelling at Diego, Alison interjecting, which really wasn’t helping and oh, god, Klaus hoped he wasn’t about to throw up again--

“--Christ, Klaus, are you even listening?” Diego’s voice cut through Klaus’ addled thoughts, and he covered up his flinch by sitting up quickly. 

“Uh--yup, yes, definitely listening, what did you say again?” Klaus was having a hard time focusing his eyes on Diego, and he was pretty sure he was sweating now, but all he felt was shaky and cold. He really wanted to go back to bed, turn all the lights off, and hope the ghosts would shut up long enough for him to sleep this off. 

“Klaus…” Alison started, like she wanted to tell him off but didn’t know how. She trailed off instead.

“You need to start taking this seriously,” Luther said, and there he went sounding like their dad again. He’d stopped yelling after Diego had started talking, but the low tone of his voice still felt like too much. “You can’t be high all the time; if we’re going to stop the apocalypse we have to do it together, as a family. We don’t have time for games.”

Klaus didn’t even want to respond to that. At this point, even Ben had given up trying to convince him to tell his siblings what was going on. He was off in a corner, reading the book he always had, like he’d finally realized Klaus was right; they’d never listen to him, sober or not. 

“He’s not,” Five spoke up from the bar. Klaus glanced up at him, surprised, and badly covered up a grimace when his head swam. He hadn’t considered his youngest--oldest?--brother in his excuses to Ben, and he thought now that he probably should have. Five was looking at him with that annoyingly calculating gaze he always adopted when he was trying to solve a problem. Klaus didn’t exactly like the implications of that, but he was glad someone was actually listening to him, so he’d take it.

“Thank you, at least one of you believes your poor, dear brother,” he tried, but it fell flat. He wasn’t even feeling up to dramatics by now, and he was pretty sure that if he moved any more than he already had, he’d throw up again. 

“He’s not high,” Five said again, more firmly, to the siblings. “You’ve all seen what he’s like when he’s high. This isn’t it. He’s quiet, he hasn’t made an annoying comment since he came in here, and he didn’t even complain when you yelled at him.” He turned to Klaus and asked, “Are you sick?”

“Yeah,” Klaus answered tiredly, rubbing at his eyes again quickly, “Migraine.” 

“You’re sick?” Diego echoed, an oddly comical parody of his earlier question.

“I caught him throwing up earlier, but I thought it was just withdrawal again.” Luther’s face was a strange mix of sheepish and confused, sinking further into sheepish when Alison rounded on him. 

“You knew he was sick, and you still made him come down here?” She challenged. 

“Well, I--”

“The apocalypse isn’t going to be stopped by you pushing people past their limits, Luther! You’re not dad!”

As the rest of them devolved into shouting again, Klaus dropped back against the cushions behind him and let out a heavy breath. He wasn’t sure if he could just leave, yet, but all the noise was jarring and he really wanted to just take a nap. He glanced up, tired eyes meeting Five’s across the room. 

Five rolled his eyes skyward and pushed past the arguing siblings to get to Klaus, taking hold of his arm and jumping them away from the living room in a flash of blue light. They landed in Klaus’s room, where Klaus was promptly deposited on his bed. The jump and the light had been disorienting, for him and for Ben--even as a ghost, he was clutching his book and looking a little disgruntled--and by the time he’d blinked back the spots in his vision it was clear that Five had jumped to and from the bathroom too; he popped back into the room and dropped a couple of painkillers into Klaus’s hand, along with a glass of water. Klaus stared at the tablets for a moment, confused by the small amount of care his usually stoic brother was showing him. Five sent him a pointed look, mirrored unknowingly by Ben across the room, and that was enough for Klaus to grin weakly and down the pills and water in one go. 

“Thanks, little bro,” Klaus teased warmly, and Five scowled. 

“Go to sleep,” was all Five said in response, but he opted for actually walking out of the room when he left, so he could flick off the light and shut the door. The lack of spatial jumping was telling enough. Klaus chuckled quietly, shared a look with Ben, and rolled over to finally get some sleep.

**Author's Note:**

> Leave me a comment or come talk to me on tumblr (@nearly-writes) if you have thoughts about this fic, a prompt for me, or just want to yell about TUA in my inbox. I'm up for anything :)


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